Whilst the silly season is truly upon us it also means that another season is about to arrive. It with startling regularity now that I write a post like this somewhere online every year, and yet every year it has to be done. For it is not just silly season but it also exam result season. In a matter of weeks the results will be in for all those 16 and 18 year old who have taken GCSEs and A-Levels respectively, and with it comes the commentary and opinion of which I guess this post forms a part.
The season has become thoroughly predictable now as well. Results will be up, there will be those that praise, and those that criticise and question. The Education Secretary will of course instantly denounce anyone doing the latter as insulting the hard work that children have put in. The argument will be closed down painting the critics as nasty people who want to belittle the success of children, whilst those that give praise will be revelling in the wonders of the Government's ability to raise standards and results.
As such we should deal with that disingenuous practice first. Putting it simply, no one that criticises the ever-rising results is saying that the kids that have achieved the results have not done so through applying themselves as instructed to achieve the result. If the exam was on taking five football penalties, where scoring five got you an A and scoring just one got you an E, then the kids that score five have got A's, good for them. However, if the width of the goalposts has been made wider and wider each year then whilst the kids have achieved the best that they can, accurately measuring and comparing one year with the last becomes an impossible task.
This is the problem and the valid criticism of the exam system and it's results that we have each year. Results are presented to us as improvements on a year by year basis, yet we know that each year the exam structures change, the exams themselves change, the marking criteria changes, and in almost every year one or more Exam boards makes a cock-up. As such saying that results are improving, thereby kids are improving is devoid of intellectual foundation.
If we take this flawed approach to assessing children's performance, where the goalposts are moved each year, then we are, apparently, creating a nation of more and more young geniuses each year. And yet there is instinctive and anecdotal evidence that that simply isn't the case. Come September you can almost guarantee that a University somewhere will say that it has had to introduce yet more catch-up work to its degrees because it can no longer rely on the A-level result to ensure that kids already know something.
I should say here as well that I am a product of this system myself. I took GCSEs four years into the exam. I have no doubt in my mind that a friend of mine, Adam, from the Crossed Pond blog who took O-Levels a few year earlier (for he is an old fart) took much tougher examinations than I did. I don't feel less than he in terms of my knowledge or ability of course, but I acknowledge that there is no way that we can make comparative assessment between my results and his. To use the cliche, it would be like comparing apples with oranges, and this is the situation we have each year now as things change.
Why is this happening though is not quite as simple a question to answer as the Daily Mail might have us believe though. It is not so easy as to simply saying "exams are easier" and thus if we make them harder it will resolve the problem. For the problem is a deeper cultural one in my mind around the very concept of "failure". If we look at the argument against the academic selection by the dominant educationalists of the Left, we see that fundamental to it is the belief that we mark children as failures. This is, they say, wrong. In fact it is they who are wrong.
We can of course split hairs about the age at which one academic selects and thereby confronts a child with the concept of failure, but confront the child we must, because like it or not failure happens in life. Whether it be your driving test (which, paradoxically, has actually got harder), a job interview, or something you may one day do in work, we will all fail at one time in our life. Having an education system that appears to remove the very concept and, again to use the cliche, instils an "everyone gets prizes" culture, is the basis of what is wrong with our examination system and the ever-improving results.
Again I stress that I am not saying kids don't put in the work required to get their result. The question is whether the structure and rules within which that result is gained is as valuable and stretching as it once was, because it is intellectually bankrupt to make a comparative judgement between successive years of results. Of course, the removal of failure as a concept is not something that can be easily remedied by just reintroducing it in schools, because we have extended it out in the world of adulthood as well.
Take for example the Audit Commission and the manner in which it scores the performance of local authorities that it inspects. There is no backward "direction of travel" as the Audit Commission calls it that a council can go. You are improving or you are not improving (ergo you are static). A Council cannot get worse; it can stay the same, or in can get better. We have even removed the ability for failure in the culture of public sector performance, so how can we honestly expect to reintroduce it for kids when the adults have allowed the Orwellian removal of ideas from their psyche?
This linguistic playfulness with statistics permeates back into the education sector with the inspection of schools as well. We have the concept of "value added" so ranking are defined based on how much better a school as become. It does not take a genius therefore to see that a school with 100% of its pupils getting top marks in exams has no where to go and finds itself ranked at the bottom. In the pursuit of obliterating the notion of failure we have a system that actively denigrates genuine success in local authorites and schools alike.
It is something of an irony therefore that when - in the coming weeks - we critics of the system are told we are denigrating the success of children that the ministers saying it should do so within a system and far-reaching culture that artificially elevates overall poor performance and ignores genuine excellence.
6 comments:
Do you have anything other than anecdotal evidence that exams are easier? Do you have anything empirical?
Put up or shut up Dizzy.
errr this was a post about something much wider than that. And a quick read of different things that teachers are saying about marking, along with the comparison of exam question forumlation over consecutive years, or what university admissions and lecturers are saying about their student who, according to their result, are geniuses, answers the question.
But as I say, this was a piece that started from exams, but was actually about the wider issue of failure and the fact that we have a created culture that refuses to acknowledge that it can happen. So, frankly, there is nothing to put up or shut up about if one reads it, and actually see that I was talking about something much wider.
Oh yes, and also this is my blog and I don't have to provide empircal evidence for anything, it's my opinion, little more. if you don't like or don't agree with then don't bloody read it.
Well said Sir; on purely anecdotal evidence (my own) I am becoming increasingly frustrated and disillusioned when interviewing new employees, and comparing academic "results" and actual real world capabilities which are often a degree of magnitude apart.
I am in agreement with you about the lack of acceptance of failure.
I have spoken to teachers (who are also markers) about the issue, as well as university lecturers, but I don't want to make a hypocrite out of myself for using anecdotal evidence.
I think exams are a bad starting block for making your particular point, especially when the reason that results are getting better are primarily because teachers over the years are more able to finely tune their teaching to game the exam. Once they figure out a way of deconstructing the methods required to produce a good grade in a package that is appropriate for the kids to digest, individual genius is no longer required to obtain the grades necessary. It is, on the whole, advances in teaching ability rather than the changing of exams.
There are of course exceptions to this, whereby the syllabus and therefore the exams have become easier. This often happens in subjects that are massively declining in popularity, such as was happening to the Mathematics A-Level. A couple of years ago they rejigged the pure maths modules so that what was once covered in 3 modules was now covered in 4 - requiring less work overall (6 modules are required to complete the A-Level). The result has been to stem the bleed in numbers of those taking the Maths A-Level, I am no sure this is the correct way to have done so, however. It raises an interesting question - what is the best way to get kids to take up a certain subject?
I apologise for prior poor temper
As an old fart I can confirm that whether the exams themselves were easier or harder (they were harder) under O Levels an A winning 60-65% might only get a candidate a 3 or a 2 at best (70-75% for a 1) and with 50% a 5 would beckon as against a B.
So the marking system is certainly less capable of discrimination between good, bad and indifferent.
The 4-GCSE ICT and even call-centre and dance BTecs are obviously an easy path (with 100% course and group work as well) ... to nowhere all that useful except improved school performance.
A Levels too enjoy very different marking systems with more course and group work.
But here is the most significant point to my eyes:
Exams ought to be getting harder and harder and harder not being "just as hard as they ever were". Things that were tough to get 15 or 25 years ago in terms of say Computing and networking are just givens to many 11 year olds these days.
As a species on average we get smarter and smarter in terms of what we know by osmosis and for that reason and because they are becoming less and less good at discriminating A Levels ought to be "getting harder" in objective terms.
That would mean they were staying "just as hard". In fact the difficulties of kinder heute with Maths 101 at University indicates that the exams are getting easier or at least through assessment tics and teaching to exams getting easier to brain grade upwards.
On the other hand people find their own level at college and in the world of work so none of this exam result tragedy is the end of the world.
Uni results have always shown the straight A kids - reflecting superior coaching or bullying - often fade badly at Uni when they have to coach and motivate themselves.
"superior coaching or bullying"? Don't you mean parental support?
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